A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.

There is hardly any one so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to some one at some time.

To cease to admire is a proof of deterioration.

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational.

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

Every general increase of freedom is accompanied by some degeneracy, attributable to the same causes as the freedom.

To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse.

The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.

We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.

Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.

The bashful are always aggressive at heart.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.

When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to 'Americanize' him.

To get away from ones working environment is in a sense to get away from ones self and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

The mind is not a hermits cell but a place of hospitality and intercourse.

To have no heroes is to have no aspiration to live on the momentum of the past to be thrown back upon routine sensuality and the narrow self.

A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun.

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.